


Leave a Part of Me Inside You

by hobbitdragon



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Altered Mental States, Awkwardness, Communication, Cultural Differences, Fuckbuddies To Lovers, Lack of Communication, M/M, No pregnancy of any kind, Oviposition, Romance, Tentacle Dick, Xenobiology, but in a super romantic way, takes place during the Mass Effect 2 timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 02:31:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13824606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/pseuds/hobbitdragon
Summary: Shepard is a hardass who is not good at romance, Garrus is awkward and afraid of rejection, neither of them know how to talk to each other about feelings, and yet they still get to have romantic tentacle sex in the end.





	Leave a Part of Me Inside You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Earlgreyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Earlgreyer/gifts).



> So I signed up for this exchange for the sole purpose of writing Really Alien Sex, complete with non-human sexual response patterns, anatomy, and reproductive habits. I like to think I met my own goal here with this fic. XD As a result, I'm not really sure if/how to warn for content. Suffice it to say, while the sex is definitely kind of weird, it's all consensual, all awkwardness is meant to be adorkable/bittersweet/well-meaning, and it's got a happy ending, or as happy as anything can be in the greater Mass Effect trilogy timeline. If anyone reads this and thinks it needs more tags or warnings, please let me know!

Shepard’s eyes travelled up and over Garrus’ injuries with the same familiar cool dispassion Garrus had remembered so fondly for the last two years. Or rather, the cool dispassion Garrus had fantasized about, regretted, and mourned for the last two years. Garrus refused to squirm, responsiveness to the impulse trained out of him by years of commanding officers. But he felt the desire in his limbs, in the readiness to move and his awareness of the doorway behind him. He couldn’t quite meet Shepard’s eyes and looked at his hairline instead.

“Well you’ve always been ugly,” Shepard deadpanned, mouth tightening with mock resignation. “Slap a little face paint on it and no one will know the difference.”

The dimmed artificial lights on this strange new version of the Normandy indicated that the hour neared this ship’s sleep cycle. In the reduced light, the subtle glow of Shepard’s scars showed more clearly. So those hadn’t been a trick of Omega’s lights after all--which meant cybernetics, implants under the skin. Probably part of whatever had happened to Shepard in the last two years. Garrus’ need to run, or to bite, or to chitter like a sprog intensified, and Garrus dropped his stare onto the floor, no more able to control the next words out of his mouth than to hold back the rays of a sun.

“Some people even find face scars attractive in a mate,” Garrus rumbled, mortified and fighting himself as he did it, barely keeping himself from blurting out, _I do, yours are gorgeous, please don’t find mine off-putting._ “But most of those people are Krogans,” he finished miserably, making a weak joke out of his feelings.

Shepard had come to rescue _Archangel._  Until Shepard had crossed the bridge he hadn’t known the moniker applied to Garrus. Which meant Shepard hadn’t sought out _Garrus_ at all and their meeting on Omega was mere luck--or worse still, the machinations of Cerberus. Perhaps Shepard was disappointed or angry that the vigilante he’d been sent to recruit had turned out to be Garrus.

Garrus risked a glance at Shepard’s face, which hadn’t budged. Garrus couldn’t imagine how he could have made his continued infatuation any plainer or more pathetic other than to outright bend over the nearest surface and retract his genital scales.

But then to Garrus’ shock, Shepard smiled, his posture softened, and he stepped close, near enough for his scent to hit Garrus’ nostrils and the scent pits inside his mandibles. It was almost like no time had passed and the last two years had never happened, the rich human odors of him filling the spaces of Garrus’ skull. But there was an edge of wrongness—metallic, somehow, almost Turian, with a hint of something like medigel. And there were those scars, a latticework of golden-red just below Shepard’s thin human skin, that indicated the presence of something that hadn’t been there before. Garrus suspected they would have similar marks once the bandages came off, places his scales wouldn’t regrow and his fragile skin lay etched into patterns over his own new implants.

Shepard’s right hand lifted, coming up under Garrus’ chin to lift it and turn it to the side so Shepard could more fully examine the damage. The wrecked skin stretched, throbbing, but Garrus let himself be moved. It almost felt like the pain Shepard had used to dole out himself, and that similarity relaxed something in Garrus.

“Chakwas tells me you’ll maintain full function, and this will soon be just cosmetic,” Shepard murmured. “But this must hurt. She got you on the good painkillers?”

“Not yet,” Garrus admitted. “They take away my filter. I, uh. Didn’t want to say anything stupid to you.”

Shepard smiled again, his teeth bright white against his skin. “Shame, I’d like to know what would come out of you in that state.”

A familiar tingle of fear went through Garrus at that. Shepard was a good man--mostly. He believed in forgiveness and tolerance so long as time and resources allowed. But he wasn’t a _nice_ man, nor given to softness. He had moments in which he was damn near Krogan, enjoying violence for its own sake, laughing at killshots and crippling blows. And Garrus had no idea what had happened to Shepard in the last two years, but it didn’t seem likely that the Alliance had forced him into quiet retirement, or even required him to go for psychological care. Garrus remembered now that the Allieance had tried after the Battle for the Citadel. Shepard had refused, even when offered treatment from the best Asari clinicians.

Garrus thought sometimes that all of his own inadequacies were so obvious that the whole universe could see them as though they were printed on his face like his tattoos. Whatever was wrong with Shepard, though, Shepard had always kept locked away behind a relaxed face and within his unruffled military posture. His big human eyes pierced into Garrus, who welcomed the squirming discomfort of it because anything was better than Shepard still being dead.

Then Shepard pulled away, turning and striding toward the door to the medbay, where he paused.

“Inform me as soon as you’re fit for active duty. I want to put you through your paces, see how you are when you’re not hopped up on stims and coming off six cycles without sleep.”

Shepard waited only long enough to hear Garrus’ “Yes, sir,” and then the doors sealed behind him.

 

**

 

Two weeks later they had a human named Jack stashed in the underbelly of Engineering like a bomb which might detonate at any moment, and Shepard sprawled out naked on his luxuriously big Captain’s quarters bed. Enough time had passed after sex that Garrus had come back to his senses, but not enough to have his internal censor fully back online. Which meant Garrus finally dared to ask the question that had been burning him up since he’d first spotted Shepard through the rifle scope.

“So what actually happened to you two years ago?” Garrus murmured, seated upright so he could trace the scars that flowed down the left side of Shepard’s chest like circuitry. Garrus took in another deep breath, this time fluttering his mandibles so he could smell their mixed scents better. Despite the ways Shepard smelled different now, the scent of his human body was no less satisfying, sinking into Garrus’ scent pits like water into dry earth.

Shepard turned his head on the pillow, seeming to study Garrus for several long seconds. Garrus detected a slight increase of Shepard’s heart rate, a small change in the metallic edge of his scent, but that was all. Garrus didn’t know what it meant, had never been as good at reading humans as some.

“What has the crew told you?” Shepard asked, one of his typical non-answers. Garrus suppressed a growl of irritation--mostly. A little rumble of it escaped the vocal cords under his sternal crest of bone, but at least his other voiceboxes remained silent. They were both over forty now, and Garrus knew he couldn’t lust after the human’s façade of calm at the same time as he complained about it. Or Garrus _could_ , and would, but not without seeming ridiculous.

“Miranda says you were dead, and that she and a team of scientists reconstructed you from brain scans and physical remains preserved in the vacuum of space,” Garrus replied, drawing his thumb over the little nub on Shepard’s chest from which a whelp might draw nutriment. (Humans were so strange, to feed their young from their own flesh.) A slow smile crinkled the skin around Shepard’s eyes.

“If you’ve already asked Miranda, why ask me?”

Another question in response to a question, another non-answer. When humans bared their teeth like this, it was supposed to mean contentment or happiness, but having worked in C-Sec, Garrus knew that it could also mean anger or fear. What did Shepard mean by it? 

“Because Miranda is, as Jack put it, a Cerberus cheerleader,” Garrus replied, following Shepard’s lead as he always did. “Even the other Cerberus diehards among your crew distrust her. And because you watch her whenever she’s in the room, like either you’re a prey animal or she is.”

Shepard lifted a hand to stroke the delicate new skin under Garrus’ jaw, where the incendiary rounds had burned deepest. A ripple of sensation passed through Garrus at the brush of those soft fingertips, a prickle of pleasure-pain that forced another flutter of his mandibles and a hard inhalation. The muscles around his genital scales shifted, ready to open up a second time. Suppressing the impulse to lie down on his back and present himself again, Garrus felt almost certain that Shepard was trying to distract him. Garrus tried not to let it work.

“You know they improved me,” Shepard began in his flat human voice. After a decade spent on the Citadel, Garrus had grown used to the fact that humans had only one set of vocal cords. Shepard’s voice had been an acquired taste, enjoyed because of who it belonged to rather than its actual sound. “I don’t have to pump myself full of antihistamines anymore if I want to fuck you.”

Shepard still wore a condom most of the time during their ‘stress relief’, because Garrus was no more immune to _Shepard’s_ secretions than he’d ever been. But it was true that they didn’t have to plan sex in advance as much anymore, avoid all fluid contact, and have access to medical-grade antihistamines. The thought had even crossed Garrus’ mind that he might now be able to lay eggs in Shepard without harming the Commander.

The notion got another ripple of response, mandibles clicking against his face-plates and ovipositor squirming in its tight little pocket behind his genital scales. Shepard’s smile broadened.

“One thing hasn’t changed,” Garrus grumbled, dropping his gaze. “You’re still every bit as guarded. So at least they got that right when they remade you.”

Shepard’s smile faded, lips sliding back down to cover his teeth. Then he dug his nails into Garrus’ tender nape, sending a wave of arousal down through him.

Whether Shepard meant it as punishment or reward Garrus had no idea.

 

**

 

If anything, Shepard kept his thoughts even closer to his chest now. More of his answers were opaque or misleading than ever, and if Garrus hadn’t known better, he might have suspected an issue with his translator.

But physically....well. If Garrus just looked at the ways they touched or spent time together outside of missions, perhaps Shepard _had_ grown softer and more communicative after all. Two years ago, their liaison had been just stress relief: occasional, absent of commitment, and often utilitarian in terms of achieving sexual satisfaction for both of them. Humans fucked until the bizarre sensory climax they achieved, which had created a convenient end mark for their encounters. (Garrus had read endless descriptions of human orgasm, both fascinated and unnerved by the descriptions of paroxysm and ecstasy. And he avidly watched Shepard experience it, each time different and equally shocking.)

Shepard before the destruction of the Normandy had done whatever necessary to coax Garrus’ ovipositor out into the open but got right down to business after that, fucking into the soft cavity the organ normally occupied. That, combined with Shepard’s attentions to Garrus’ throat to simulate mating bites (using Shepard’s deliciously blunt human teeth and soft human fingers) brought about the Unity state with reliable ease and intensity. Garrus had floated for hours afterward in the cascade of his own hormones, lax-limbed and agreeable with everyone, feeling one with the spirits and mesmerized by the passing stars, the vastness of space, and the comforting purr of the ship engines.

But Shepard _now_ \--the Unity states Shepard helped create might last for a whole day, Shepard’s exhausting attention to detail manifesting in the truly mind-blowing array of ways he found to stimulate, intensify, and extend Garrus’ responses. He even let Garrus inside him now, let Garrus curl his ovipositor into the tight, warm confines of Shepard’s mouth or rectum. No question got a full or direct answer, but Shepard _literally_ let Garrus in elsewhere, so maybe that meant something. And sometimes, Shepard even asked Garrus to spend the night. Garrus understood what it meant for someone like the Commander to let anyone see him twitch and mumble in his sleep, lines of stress appearing on his soft brow. Shepard looked calmer and less affected when awake, somehow.

The lines on Shepard’s face deepened the closer the Normandy came to passing through the Omega 4 Relay.

Impending death made many people honest. The excellent Turian brandy Shepard brought aboard from his most recent visit to the Citadel made Garrus even moreso.

Buzzed from the drink and mesmerized in bed with his high-ranking lover, waiting for sex he knew would be good....if it weren’t for the equally high probability of dying young within the next month, Garrus would say this was the ideal life. He couldn’t get enough of Shepard’s smell, clean and warm with pleasure.

But nor could Garrus stop thinking that if they survived, he wanted this _forever_. He wanted a mate, not casual stress relief. Maybe Shepard was saying the same thing without words? Or maybe all the Cerberus interference in his brain had just made him want more physical contact, and that explained the change in their behavior together.

Shepard ran the fingertips of his left hand around the inside of Garrus’ clavicular crest. The touch was a tease. Shepard knew Garrus had little to no sensation in the bony ridge around his shoulders while also being so close to the hypersensitive tissues of his neck.

“Do you even like me?” Garrus’ mouth asked with no permission from his mind. And then his mind caught up and tensed his his legs and arms in preparation for being kicked out of bed, or worse, given another dissatisfying non-reply he would ruminate on for weeks. He dug his spurs into the soft material of the bedclothes, mandibles clicking.

Instead of saying anything, though, Shepard pushed a lazy finger against Garrus’ lip scales until Garrus opened his mouth and let Shepard touch the dry surface of his tongue. Shepard always seemed fascinated by the fact that Turians didn’t lubricate their mouths and their taste-buds began at the entrance of the esophagus, back in the soft palate. The silence stretched, and Garrus started to think that Shepard simply wouldn’t answer at all.

“Feeling insecure?” Shepard returned at last, with a low rumbling laugh that almost sounded Turian. “Come now, I have it on very good authority that some people find facial scars attractive.”

Another total non-answer. Garrus _hated_ it. Or disliked it as much as he could while feeling so warm from the brandy.

“No, I understand why you would like the sex,” Garrus replied, turning his face up till the digit rested on his chin. “I just don’t understand why you like _me_. Or if you even do.”

Shepard’s smile disappeared. And what a strange thing, the human smile. Turians had no front teeth to display, and facial scales made the tectonics of expression subtler, more focused on body language and the eyes, the angle of the head and the movement of the mandibles. Which meant that some humans found Turians blank-faced and hard to read. But Shepard wasn’t one of those humans. He read Turians alarmingly well.

Garrus, meanwhile, had no idea what to make of the subtle movements of Shepard’s face following his words. The muscles of Shepard’s neck moved under his skin as his head turned away. His strange body looked exceptionally beautiful like this, skin warmly colored in the red-tinted lights designed to interfere less with human sleep patterns.

Curling up as though shy, Shepard’s finger withdrew from Garrus’ face. Garrus wanted to touch Shepard’s mouth in return now, genital scales starting to retract even despite the stress of their conversation. Embarrassing. Garrus hoped Shepard wouldn’t look down.

“Do you really think I would spend this much time with someone I don’t like?”

Another fucking question. It was _almost_ an answer, it _implied_ that it could be one. But just once, Garrus wanted Shepard to make a statement outside of giving speeches or talking to the press. Garrus’ eyes narrowed.

“You’re a political figure, so of course you would. It makes you look open-minded to have a Turian lover even if that Turian is me. But if I’m going to die with you, I want to know who I’m dying with, not just what I’m dying for."

At this Shepard sighed, which like so many other human gestures might be used to indicate sadness or frustration or simply changed oxygen needs. What Shepard meant the exhalation to express remained ambiguous.

“You’re right, I am a political figure,” Shepard admitted at last. But even that was a statement of obvious fact, not a real admission of anything. “And a career military man. Neither role has given me much incentive to be....candid.”

“And I don’t provide any incentive?” Garrus complained automatically, then heard his own words and realized how needy that sounded and tried to backpedal. “I didn’t mean--well, that’s not to say--”

Shepard’s hand covered Garrus’ mouth, stopping the impending babbling before it reached full force, for which Garrus felt grateful. For several long seconds, they stared at each other, Garrus wishing he could sink into the pillows, or even turn his head without his crest shredding the bedclothes. For lack of better options, Garrus closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Shepard said at last, and that this Garrus blinked. “I resolved to do better with you after finding you again on Omega. I’ve been trying, but romance isn’t in my pre-programmed skillsets.” A muscle at the corner of Shepard’s jaw tensed up, as though he were gritting his teeth, and he looked away. “I never had the chance to learn. When I was younger, it was all just fraternization we had to keep quiet about, or quick flings on shore leave. I know how to fuck almost any species you care to name, but _this...._ when I fell for people it never went anywhere, so I just gave up on having it.” Shepard’s eyes narrowed, lips pulling up at one corner, which normally meant anger? Was he angry at Garrus?

The silence expanded, growing alongside Garrus’ discomfort, before Shepard finally continued. “I half hoped this lack of skill was something Cerberus got wrong in remaking me. Some bit of information that didn’t get copied over because they had to wake me sooner than planned. But if any of my memories are real, that’s just wishful thinking.” When Shepard looked back at Garrus this time, the lines of stress had appeared between his eyes as they rarely did while he was awake. Shepard couldn’t possibly be _afraid_ of Garrus’ reaction, could he?

Garrus wiggled his mandibles in discomfort, half disappointed and half relieved at this evidence of personal failings on Shepard's part. Of all the responses Garrus had anticipated were he to ask for more from their relationship, this hadn’t been among them. Garrus had honestly expected some sort of rejection, because why would any human want an awkward Turian with a face too messed-up for even the best of medicine to repair? But in Garrus’ private fantasies, he had imagined Shepard unruffled like he was in all the videos on the extranet. Imagining calm yet passionate declarations of love hadn’t prepared Garrus for the discovery that Shepard didn’t know how to navigate situations like this either.

“Trying isn’t enough, I know,” Shepard went on, his expression smoothing away into something certain at last. “What matters is results. Effort that doesn’t get results is wasted. So I’m sorry I’ve wasted what little time we have left.”

“What?” Garrus yelped, then swallowed down the blather that wanted to follow after. Or tried to. “No, I mean--in some contexts yes, but--look, being with me isn’t a military action. I just want--” What popped out next was _not_ what Garrus meant to say. “--I want to lay my _eggs_ in you.”

The words hung in the air for several long seconds, in which Shepard’s eyes went wide. Only then did Garrus realize how perverted or intrusive that might sound to a human. Garrus tried to get up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed with the intention of escaping to spare them both the awfulness of discussing _that_ statement, but Shepard’s hand grabbed him by the back of his bony collar.

“Wait,” Shepard demanded, and this time it was the voice of the commanding officer so many respected and looked to for guidance. “Garrus, I only know about this aspect of Turian interaction from holo-dramas. What do _you_ mean when you say that?”

The groan that escaped Garrus at this was full-chested, all six of his voiceboxes contributing to his expression of mortification. He covered his mandibles with his hands to keep them from tapping nervously against his face-plates, and even then felt them twitching under his palms.

With another Turian, eggs could survive unfertilized in a receptive host for up to ten years, until either the host decided to fertilize them, passed them on to someone else to fertilize, or rejected them. How could anyone explain the cultural weight of it to a human? Aeons of Turians had waxed eloquent about egg-laying and egg-carrying, but right now Garrus couldn’t think of any way to describe it that didn't sound ridiculous or dirty. Shepard didn’t even have the right anatomy for it, nothing like what any Turian had. It was an impossible desire, irrelevant and maudlin, and insensitive to even express to a human, who would never be able to fulfill it.

“It....it means that I trust you enough to believe that even the person you’ll be ten years from now would treat my children well, assuming you wanted to have them,” Garrus tried, then regretted it. “Not that you and I are reproductively viable, obviously. And it’s often not really about reproduction. Damn, I’m messing this up.” He let out a hum of frustration from three of his voiceboxes and hissed out a fourth. He had never tried to verbalize any of this because he had never expected to end up with someone who didn’t already understand. Moreover, Garrus had never expected to feel ready to share eggs with anyone.

“Really what it means is that I want to leave a part of me inside you,” Garrus confessed at last. “So that if I die and you survive, you’ll have a piece of me to keep for a while, after I’m gone.”

Finally Garrus forced himself to turn, to look at Shepard. The man’s face seemed calm, eyes open and undisturbed by anxiety lines, as though he were waiting to hear more. So Garrus let himself go on.

“If you were a Turian, depending on your sex, I’d leave my eggs in you here,” Garrus lay his hand on Shepard’s lower belly, where with a Turian of his same sex he would lay an egg directly into their own clutch, making his eggs indistinguishable from theirs except by expulsion and genetic testing. “Or here,” Garrus finished, moving his hand up to lay it on Shepard’s chest, where the Turian uterus lay. And, it occurred to Garrus then, also the location of the human heart--and humans had all sorts of romantic notions about hearts, didn’t they?

Shepard smiled, wrapping his hand over Garrus’ and holding it to his chest.

“I wish it were possible,” Shepard breathed. “I want something in my body that Cerberus didn’t put there. And I'd love you to leave part of yourself right here, for me to keep.”

Garrus couldn’t help it. Hearing it in Shepard’s voice was so overwhelming that Garrus’ genital scales opened of their own accord, a loop of his sex pushing wet into the air. Perhaps seeing the motion in the corner of his eye, Shepard’s gaze turned down--and he smiled, reaching out with his spare hand to let the pale blue coils extend and wrap around his fingers. The touch of his callused hand sent a wave of pleasure through Garrus, who trembled and let out a helpless whine.

“I don’t know what I’m allowed to ask,” Shepard admitted, watching the undulations of Garrus’ sex as though hypnotized. Shepard had described it as ‘serpentine’ once, which had led to Garrus looking up holos of Earth's snakes on the extranet. He could see the similarity. Freed into the air, he swelled to full size, increasing his sensitivity still further, and he could feel the tight place inside him where eggs waited to be released.

“Just say it, whatever it is,” Garrus begged, so aroused he felt dizzy and desperate to know what Shepard wanted to say.

“If you laid eggs into my mouth,” Shepard began, and Garrus almost swooned onto the bed. “I couldn’t swallow them. Would it be wrong to just--for you to lay them, even if I couldn’t keep them--”

Shepard wasn’t a Turian, and it couldn’t be like Garrus’ fantasies in which Shepard had a magical organ buried inside him, left there by Cerberus just for this purpose. The idea of Shepard spitting the eggs back out afterward made Garrus feel shaky and sick. But if the egg-laying _itself_ was an experience they could share together before going through the Omega 4 Relay....

“Please,” Garrus whispered.

A few minutes later, Garrus had laid out on the bed, and Shepard had given himself an antihistamine injection just in case. Shepard climbed on top between Garrus’ spread legs, slotting his own erection neatly into Garrus. In this _one_ way, at least, they fit together as though designed for the purpose. Already the edges of the world were opening out, everything that made Garrus himself expanding as the Unity state overtook him fast. The spirit at the core of him connected to the one within Shepard, which nestled in the pulsating body of the Normandy itself, linked by invisible ties to every life within it as they moved through the stars. The awkwardness of their fumbling words faded away, dwarfed by a greater reality of connection that language could neither describe nor mar.

Shepard’s warm soft body moved in him, over him, and Garrus reached up with the part of himself made to express this. Shepard opened his mouth, his eyes as receptive as the rest of him, and let Garrus inside.

So used to doing this without going further, it took concentration for Garrus to feel out how to share more of himself. By the time he found the right piece of himself to release, Shepard shook above him, body trembling as if pushed to its limits. Seeing that and feeling the vulnerable tremors, the next step came naturally. First one soft egg, then two, then a third slipped out of Garrus’ center. They felt like stars, as if they might glow if exposed to the air, and passed naturally out of Garrus and into his lover. Shepard’s trembling intensified, eyes fluttering as he accepted the gift.

When their bodies separated, the distance didn’t feel like anything, because something of Garrus went with Shepard as he moved around the small space. The captain’s quarters were like the chambers of the ship’s heart, Garrus thought, and so he lay peaceful and patient as he waited for Shepard to come back. In such a place Garrus could stay forever. The blankets wrapped warm around him and carried Shepard’s scent.

Time meant little in this state. At some point Shepard returned, his breath laden with the intermixing of their bodies. Garrus relaxed still further, joints loosening as he sank into the bed and the certainty of this connection. Shepard displayed his agreement by touching Garrus’ throat, all the responsive places where his life flowed so close under the surface, expanding their connection till Garrus passed beyond thought.

 

**

 

When Garrus came to himself hours later, having drifted back to coherency, he realized that Shepard must have gotten up to spit the eggs out before coming back to continue to attend to Garrus. The truth of it stung a little, but less than Garrus had feared. It was an almost pleasurable pain, like having his throat bitten by Shepard’s blunt human teeth--just another sign of exactly who Garrus had fallen in love with. The physical details mattered less than the union itself.

When Garrus turned onto his side to look at Shepard, Shepard shifted in return, drawing in a sharp breath. He always inhaled the same distinctive way every time he passed from sleep to waking, gasping as though in preparation for whatever the world might throw at him next.

Muzzily blinking up at Garrus, Garrus blinked back with slow, measured movements of his eyelids that he knew Shepard would understand as affection. It earned Garrus a crooked smile.

“Hey gorgeous,” Shepard rasped, voice husky as he reached up his left hand to cup the injury on Garrus’ face, covering the scars like a bandage. "I may hate them otherwise, but I'm glad Cerberus sent me after you."

Garrus laughed, an easy chirrup of amusement that rolled from one voicebox to another and back again. Certainty of his own death had lived in him for days before Shepard's arrival on Omega, taking up residence under his scales. If the spirits only meant to delay his death by a further six months so that he could have this with Shepard, that would have to be enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine Garrus' eggs to be about the size and texture of boba pearls, if you've ever had those tapioca drinks.


End file.
